Friday, September 26, 2014

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, September 24.)]

What an extraordinary
election campaign. And what an extraordinary result.

I am writing this column on the
morning after. By the time it’s published, most of the dust will have settled.
But even at the time of writing, I think some firm conclusions can be drawn

Obviously the result can be
seen as an endorsement of the National-led government. But for me the really
significant point was that voters overwhelmingly repudiated concerted efforts
by outsiders to sway the outcome.

New Zealanders were
emphatically saying this was their election and they weren’t going to have it
hijacked by agenda-driven activists, some of them with no stake in the country.

By outsiders I don’t just
mean literal outsiders such as Kim Dotcom, the journalist Glenn Greenwald and the
security leaker Edward Snowden. I include anyone trying to exert influence from
the sidelines.

That means Nicky Hager, whose
book Dirty Politics was obviously timed
to derail National’s election campaign. It’s not that Hager was wrong to expose
the unsavoury goings-on detailed in his book. National deserved to be shamed
and Hager was entitled to the scalp of cabinet minister Judith Collins.

But questions remain about
his motive, his method and most of all his timing. It’s reasonable to ask
whether he was just as guilty of trying to influence an election as the furtive
National Party funders he exposed in his 2005 book The Hollow Men.

The media firestorm over Dirty Politics dominated the first weeks
of the campaign. When that subsided, it was Dotcom’s turn. But the momentum of
the campaign shifted noticeably after the German’s much-touted “Moment of
Truth” event in the Auckland Town Hall.

Again, it was a carefully
orchestrated attempt to sabotage National. All those high-profile speakers,
parachuted in or beamed in by video link from their various boltholes; it all
looked a bit too obvious.

It didn’t help that Dotcom
failed to deliver on his promise to expose John Key as a liar, and even less
that he then angrily turned on journalists when they challenged him. Suddenly
the public saw the less benign side of the fun-loving German.

No one can say with absolute
certainty why people vote the way they do, but as the campaign went into its
final days I sensed a stiffening public resistance to all these finger-wagging
interlopers telling us how rotten our government was.

If I’m right, it’s highly
ironic that it was the Left, not the Right, that was damaged.Labour’s support collapsed and the Greens
fell far short of the ambitious goal they had set themselves.

This was the law of
unintended consequences kicking in big-time. It was not the outcome that the
Left had scripted for itself.

Interviewed on Sunday
morning, Labour leader David Cunliffe said the firestorms over Dirty Politics and state surveillance
had sucked up all the oxygen in the campaign, leaving little opportunity for
voters to consider policy issues.

I’m sure he’s right. The
issues that the Left had been pushing, such as child poverty and the inequality
gap, hardly got a look in.

The biggest irony of all, of
course, is that Dotcom’s own party was humiliatingly wiped out, taking with it
three-term MP Hone Harawira.

Both men will have learned a
lesson. Dotcom will have learned that New Zealanders resent big-spending
outsiders throwing their weight and money around (he acknowledged, to his
credit, that his influence had poisoned the Mana Party), and Harawira will have
learned about the dangers of Faustian pacts.

He was seen as compromising
his principles, and his people punished him for it.

I felt a bit sorry for Colin
Craig, who was thwarted by the vagaries of a flawed electoral system. The
cheerleaders for MMP frequently remind us of the failings of the old first-past-the-post
system, but they can’t ignore the shortcomings of one that denies a seat to a
party that commanded more than four percent of votes while giving two to
parties with less than one per cent support.

You have to wonder, too,
whether distrust of MMP explains the marked falloff in voter participation
since it was introduced. Voters are cynical about MMP because they realise
that the system puts more power, not less, in the hands of the politicians.
That was not the promise when it was introduced.

I almost felt sorry for
Cunliffe too. He was more convincing by the end of the campaign than he was at the
beginning – but given the history of leaders who lose elections, it’s unlikely
he’ll get another shot.

What Labour must do now,
urgently, is rejuvenate. Too many of its list MPs in the last term looked as if
they were merely keeping their seats warm.

The need for a vigorous
opposition is never greater than when a government has convincingly won a third
term and risks becoming arrogant and complacent. Democracy prevailed on
Saturday, but the concern now is whether it will be up to the job of holding the
government to account over the next three years.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

WHAT A CAMPAIGN. Its most striking feature, apart from the unprecedented
viciousness on the fringes, has been the attempt by agenda-driven activists –
some of them high-profile outsiders – to influence the outcome.

This may ultimately count in John Key’s favour. His enemies
may have overcooked things.

Voters could well look at the role played by external agents
five days out from the election and decide it looks too much like a concerted
effort to hijack their democracy.

Certainly Kim Dotcom has burned up whatever political
capital he acquired as a result of the ridiculous police raid on his home. New
Zealanders are over him.

Voters may also feel that the barrage of savage denunciation
aimed at Key during the past few weeks went beyond the bounds of fairness.
Whether he deserves their sympathy is another matter, since there is ample
evidence that he hasn’t been straight with voters.

The public may also have wondered at the remarkable number
of recent events – protest marches by Women’s Refuge activists, highly political
Nigel Latta television documentaries, alarm-laden reports on child poverty, teachers’
union attacks on charter schools – that showed the government in a bad light.

That this crescendo of outrage came immediately before an
election is, of course, entirely coincidental.

A few other observations:

■ Claims of media bias have been flying from both sides of
politics – not from the politicians themselves, who know better, but from their
overheated supporters. As usual, the accusations largely cancel each other out.

The one area where the media left itself exposed to
criticism was in its generally uncritical acceptance of Nicky Hager’s cloak of
moral purity. Hager has yet to explain why it’s okay for him to use stolen
emails while he simultaneously condemns state intelligence-gathering.

The obvious conclusion is that the Left reserves for itself
the right to decide when illegal acts are permissible because of their high
moral purpose. Call it the Waihopai Three Syndrome.

The canonisation of Hager aside, the worst the media could
be accused of was getting over-excited. Journalists thrive on drama and
conflict, and no election campaign has delivered more than this one.

■ Winston Peters is again under fire for refusing to
disclose which of the major parties New Zealand First is likely go with.

But even if he did reveal his intentions, there’s no
guarantee he would stick with them. In 1996 he appeared happy for everyone to
believe he would support Labour, then went the other way – after first keeping
the country guessing for weeks.

If he really wanted to convince us of his integrity, the
obvious course would be to guarantee support for whichever party wins the most
votes. What could be more democratic than that? But that would deny him the
pleasure of playing games and indulging in indignant bluster, which is what he
does best.

■ Watching party leaders making their pitches at a
pre-election conference organised by BusinessNZ, it was clear that the most
philosophically coherent parties – perhaps the only philosophically coherent
parties – are two from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum: ACT and the
Greens.

All the others – with the exception of Internet-Mana, which
is the political equivalent of a pantomime horse – are scrambling for the middle
ground.

Thomas Pippos, chief executive of conference co-sponsors
Deloitte, made the point that policy differences between the centre-Right and
centre-Left are slight in the context of the overall regulatory framework. The
two major parties, in other words, are noisily squabbling over a small patch of
turf.

One of the most impressive performers at the BusinessNZ event,
incidentally, was Greens co-leader Russel Norman. He was polished, articulate
and in command of the policy issues.

In his stylish suit and tie, Norman looks almost mainstream.
He personifies the transformation of the Greens from the flaky days of
hand-knitted jerseys and dreadlocks.

■ Will this election be ACT’s last hurrah? At its peak the
party had nine MPs and provided a credible voice for what is often pejoratively
referred to as neoliberalism.

Jamie Whyte has made an heroic attempt to resuscitate ACT
after the dire John Banks era, but he’s too cerebral to connect with voters.
His other-worldly quality was cruelly exposed when he had to admit he hadn’t
heard of Whanau Ora.

A strong ACT lineup in Parliament would provide
a counter-balance to the Greens on the left of Labour and stiffen National’s
spine, but it’s hard to escape the feeling the party has done its dash.

Friday, September 12, 2014

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, September 10.)

Don’t despair. Things are not as bad as they seem. At least
that’s the optimistic message I’ve taken from all the unedifying political
argy-bargy of the past few weeks.

It’s easy to think the worst, mind you. First, there was the
YouTube video of Christchurch students moronically chanting “F… John Key”. That
was a low in New Zealand politics, but it took only a couple of weeks to be
surpassed in loathsomeness by a “song” – I use that word in the loosest
possible sense – in which a semi-literate swamp-dweller snarled that he wanted to
kill John Key and f … his daughter.

How the group that made it avoided prosecution is a mystery,
especially when the Electoral Commission had previously huffed and puffed
mightily over a clever and essentially harmless musical video called Planet Key.

One was a sophisticated, legitimate piece of political
satire, the other a primitive, malevolent rant (the creator of which
subsequently claimed, in a display of mock ingenuousness that would have fooled
no one, that he was merely trying to encourage young people to vote).

Then there was Nicky Hager’s bookDirty
Politics, which – at the risk of sounding melodramatic – was like shining a
torch into a dark political backroom, the existence of which was previously
unknown, and seeing rats scurrying
around trying to escape the light.

Democracy depends on accountability, but the people whose
machinations Hager exposed were neither elected nor accountable. Democracy also
depends on transparency, but their attempts to subvert the political process relied
on concealment. We are better off now that they are out in the open.

Much the same can be said about Judith Collins’ resignation
as minister of justice, which had a cleansing effect. Collins denies the claims
against her and deserves a chance to clear her name, but the trail of allegations
against her meant she had become tainted goods. She had to go.

What about Hager himself, then? Yes, he performed a public
service by exposing what needed to be exposed. But he remains open to the
accusation that he is himself, ironically, part of the dirty politics that he
professes to despise.

He is not an impartial journalist sifting objectively
through all the evidence and weighing all the facts. He is a highly partisan, agenda-driven
campaigner who used stolen emails and apparently made no attempt either to
corroborate his material or allow the people he accused to respond, as a
journalist would.

It’s surely significant that even after all the furore of
the past few weeks, public support for Key and his government, as measured by
the opinion polls, appears to have barely moved.

That suggests the public, after weighing everything up, has
largely discounted Hager’s claims. They will have noted the strategic timing of
the book launch and possibly regard Dirty
Politics as itself a bit dirty, notwithstanding all the claims about the
purity of the author’s motives.

That’s one of the great things about an informed, open
democracy. It has a remarkable way of enabling people to see past the smoke,
flames and noise and eventually find their way to the right conclusion.

I always remember Mike Moore’s philosophical response when
the Labour government of which he was briefly the leader was thrown out of
office in 1990. “The people are always right,” he said.

He was saying that in a democracy, you can’t argue with the
result of a free and fair election. But what he said was also correct in a
broader sense: an informed electorate is capable of making wise decisions.

That’s one of the reasons I remain hopeful. But there’s
another factor too.

It’s agreed by everyone that this has been an unusually
vicious election campaign. But the important thing is that the worst of the
nastiness is on the fringes of politics, among noisy and highly partisan
activists on either side.

In the middle, where most New Zealanders dwell, life goes
on. Politics isn’t everything. They tune out most of the unpleasantness.

Another thing that gives me heart is that when the firestorm
over Dirty Politics was at its
height, I watched rival politicians debating on television. On one programme,
Education Minister Hekia Parata was in the studio with Labour’s Chris Hipkins. On
another, Social Development Minister Paula Bennett was up against her Labour
counterpart, Jacinda Ardern.

The striking thing about both these exchanges was that they
were intelligent, respectful and civilised. It was good to be reminded that
where it counts most, New Zealand politics isn’t so dire and soiled after all.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

EVERYONE agrees this has been the ugliest, most vicious
election campaign period in memory.

The previous benchmark was set in 1975, when the Citizens
for Rowling campaign foolishly lit Robert Muldoon’s fuse. But the past few
weeks have been even more ill-tempered than Muldoon at his most belligerent.

What’s different this time?Well, there’s Kim Dotcom, for starters. The big German’s motive for
entering politics was wholly negative: he wants to get rid of John Key. It may
be the first time in New Zealand history that a party has been founded on the
basis of a personal grudge.

Dotcom likes to play the amiable prankster, but the “F---
John Key” video was an attempt to legitimise mindless abuse as a political tactic –
something not seen here before.

Then of course there was the cleverly timed launch of Nicky
Hager’s book Dirty Politics – a
limpet mine attached to the hull of National’s supposedly unsinkable dreadnought.

But underlying all this is a bigger incendiary influence:
the role of social media.

Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere have played a large
hand in dictating the tone of this election. Cameron Slater’s Whale Oil is just
the tip of a large and dirty iceberg.

Much of the political commentary in online forums, both on
the Left and Right, is extraordinarily toxic and abusive.

Mercifully, much of it fails to penetrate the mainstream. And
to their credit, most politicians try to stay above it.

But among activists on both sides of politics, overheated online
forums have created an atmosphere of rage and bigotry that has reshaped
political dialogue. You can sense this baneful influence filtering through into
media coverage, which is more intense and aggressive than ever before.

How could this happen in a country with a deserved reputation
for being civilised, liberal and tolerant?

A couple of factors come to mind. The first is that the
Internet enables instantaneous comment. Someone feeling a rush of anger can be
on Facebook or Twitter within seconds.

In a previous era, if you wanted to comment on politics, you
wrote a letter to the paper. That allowed time for sober reflection – a
cooling-down period.

Then there’s the fact that in online forums, the person
you’re attacking is unseen. You’ve probably never met. In such circumstances
it’s all too easy to demonise your imagined enemies.

Online, you’re safely distanced from those you’re attacking and
feel less compunction about putting the boot in. I’ve succumbed to this depersonalising
effect myself and know how easily it can happen.

And politics has become intensely tribal. Each political
blog, whether it’s Whale Oil on the Right or The Daily Blog on the Left, has
its own tribe. They are united in hatred against the other tribe. There are even
factions within tribes that hate each other.

Any member of the Left-wing tribe foolhardy enough to stray
into the Right-wing tribe’s territory, or vice-versa, will be eviscerated.

How did we arrive at this point? At the risk of being
ridiculed for romanticising the past, I believe it has come about partly as a
result of the decline of the traditional news media.

The old-style newspaper was a “broad church”, presenting a
wide range of information and comment from which readers were able to form
their own conclusions. But the digital revolution has given politically minded people
an alternative.

They now tend to gravitate to the online forum that
represents their tribe. They show no interest in hearing what the other side
thinks, still less considering whether an opposing view might have some merit.

The newspaper was also the traditional forum for political
debate via its correspondence columns. Good newspapers took the trouble to
ensure a broad spectrum of opinion was published, and still do.

Crucially, letters were subject to an editing process which
filtered out abusive and defamatory comment. And just as important, anonymity
was prohibited. The price of being able to comment publically was that you had
to identify yourself. No such constraints apply online, where anonymity emboldens cowards.

Champions of the Internet applaud the fact that public
comment is no longer controlled by gatekeepers in the mainstream media, and
they’re right, up to a point. But the gatekeepers were a civilising influence
whose absence from social media we may come to regret.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.